Apparently, this didn't get sent to the list since I made a mistake in
the CC field. I've forwarded it to www-style@w3.org.
Sylvain Galineau wrote:
> I am asking : what about IE8's rendering is less logical and/or worse
> than that implemented by two other browser vendors ? I'm fine with
> you singling out IE as long as I understand what is specific to IE
> for the issue being reported.
I just viewed Gérard's test case [1] in the latest releases of Mozilla
Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Windows Internet Explorer and WIE8 is the
only browser of the four to render the table without borders around the
table cells. However, if I turn on Compatibility View, the borders
suddenly materialize.
Considering the renderings of other browsers; assuming that
Compatibility View is, in fact, representative of what WIE7 renders; and
assuming that what is rendered when both |rules="all"| and
|border-collapse: separate| are both in effect isn't defined anywhere,
WIE8's rendering is nonsensical in that it uniquely defies what other
vendors have implemented.
It's also nonsensical from a logical point of a view since a table to
which |border-collapse: separate| is explicitly applied should not have
its internal borders simply vanish when |rules="all"| is declared; one
would think that an author would use |rules="none"| in conjunction with
either of |frame="border"| or the |border| attribute with a positive
value if that was the desire.
Finally, this appears to be a violation of a SHOULD in the HTML 4.01
spec; section 11.3.1 implies that the rendering of Gérard's test case
[1] should be identical between |border="4"| and |border="4"| with
|rules="all"| since the former implies the latter: "Other values of
border imply |frame="border"| and, unless otherwise specified,
|rules="all"|". In checking all of the previously named browsers, the
only browser that is inconsistent with this part of the spec is WIE8.
— Patrick Garies
[1]
http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE8Bugs/TableRulesAll-BCSeparate.html